ReMix:Kingdom Hearts "Lament for a Fallen Warrior" 3:39

GDC just announced Yoko Shimomura will receive a lifetime achievement Game Developers Choice Award for her work as a game composer, so we've gotta pay respect to the queen and the legend! Whether you know Shimomura for Street Fighter II, Breath of Fire, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Mario & Luigi, or Final Fantasy XV (oh my gosh, rattling off a lot and it's not even close to covering it), you've heard her music in games and it's made an impression. As a community, we've paid tribute to Super Mario RPG, and we've even professionally provided our interpretations of her work for the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix soundtrack. Now we've got another burgeoning game composer making their mark in honor of Shimomura, as former OCR judge Jordi Storm puts a plaintive point on a Shimomura masterpiece from, arguably, her most well-known and respected VGM score, Kingdom Hearts! Jordi not only beautifully arranged and performed the song, he also braved the Finnish elements (!) for a music video:

"Hello!! Here is my mostly music box and vocal arrangement of "Dearly Beloved" from Kingdom Hearts; I would say definitely one of the most iconic melodies in the world of video game soundtracks. I've wanted to arrange this beautiful and iconic track from Kingdom Hearts for over half my life, and I'm pleased to say I've finally gotten around to doing so! I've been really enjoying creating arrangements for music box in recent years, and so I had the idea this year to begin a series of "Dreamsongs" – tracks from video game and anime soundtracks, with nostalgic music box as the spine of the arrangement, harmonic vocal layers as the centrepiece, topped with an array of ethereal sound design. I felt that "Dearly Beloved" would be the perfect candidate to test this approach, and I'm pleased with the result!

The original OCR title I picked is inspired by the concept I had for the music video accompanying this arrangement on my YouTube channel. I'd like to just write an IMMENSE thank you to my partner Alex, who filmed with me for four hours in -10 Celsius icy winds to get all of this footage with me... Brr! We were absolutely freezing, but determined to see the vision I had become a reality. We're both pretty amateur when it comes to this kinda stuff, but despite the cold, we had a surprising amount of fun. We're also both happy with a lot of the footage we shot! We filmed this in the Kvarken Archipelago. If you've not been before, I recommend it! <3 Finland is brutal in the winter, but in that brutality is also undeniable, sheer beauty. The things us foolish creatives do for our art, right?

I'll leave the video open to your own interpretation! We ended up shooting a lot of footage, and it was a bit hard to balance the pacing of the video; leaving space for it to breathe, but also fitting in the storyline concept. We're definitely going to be investing in a gimble in the future too, to get some more stable footage. (I can assure you, we were both shaking in our boots, haha!)

I've resolved to submit more actively to OCR this year and onwards. Hopefully, the arrangement is suitable for OC ReMix, and I'd be honoured if it would be deemed postworthy! I really hope you enjoy this! :)"

This will sound passive-aggressive because text doesn't convey emotion: we actually don't have any more Jordi submissions in the hopper. :'-( However the reason for that is because right around the time of submitting this, Jordi received an amazing VGM career opportunity that pulled him away from being a judge as well as both him & his now-husband Alex from creating fan arrangements or "for fun" music & videos, and we couldn't be prouder. :-) (Besides, we already caught up with Jordi this week and he's looking forward to eventually submitting something else!) One of the things that was most evident when Jordi tested with us for a judge position was his encouraging tone, so besides his musical talent (and his willingness to suffer for his art... brrrr ;-D), Jordi's high EQ and thoughtfulness are exactly the kind of positivity anyone would be overjoyed to have on their project. When he's eventually not busy working under the learning tree on projects with Will Roget, II and Kow Otani, we hope Jordi will mosey on back and provide some more enveloping music like this (fingers crossed).

Besides being perfect for baby music, music boxes sound quaint and can also establish a pensive mood in the right setting, so respect to Jordi for taking things in that direction. Music box combines with twinkling chromatic percussion and Jordi's emotive, mourning vocals before a textural shift at 2:15 with subtle chanting, sleigh bells, and airier padding providing a rise in the energy that manages to sound even more somber before winding down at 3:00. Delicate, measured, purposeful...

We lament our fallen warrior, Jordi (just in terms of being a judge), but if other former panelists like Vig, JJT, Danny Baranowsky, The Wingless, Mattias Häggström Gerdt, zircon, Jillian Aversa, OceansAndrew, and Big Giant Circles are any indication, we're confident Jordi will excel if he has designs on music or gaming industry success!